MWC 2013: Huawei shows off the 4.7-inch Ascend P2

There's a new entrant in the ranks of the HD screen-toting handsets being showcased at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona: Huawei's Ascend P2. We first glimpsed the Ascend P2 in late January courtesy some leaked press images.

The Ascend P2 runs on a 1.5GHz quad-core processor and features LTE Cat 4, which the company claims provides download speeds of up to 150Mbps. It is 8.4mm thick and its 4.7-inch 720p display is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 2. The phone is set to come out in June 2013, and will be available in black or white. You can get a closer look at the phone in the promo video below.

Here's a look at some of the highlighted features of the Ascend P2:

• 4.7-inch IPS HD display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels
• LTE, 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi
• GPS with GLONASS
• Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, NFC
• 13 megapixel camera with 1080p recording, 1.3 megapixel front camera with 720p recording
• 16GB internal memory

The Ascend P2 has a 720p 4.7-inch display

The Ascend P2 runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with Huawei’s own Emotion UI 1.5 on top. The smartphone is equipped with a 2,420 mAh battery with a quoted battery life of 310 hours on 2G. The device features Huawei’s Quick Power Control (QPC) and Automated Discontinuous Reception (ADRX) power-saving technologies, which the company claims reduce power consumption and charging time by more than 25 percent compared to other smartphones.

The camera on the smartphone is equipped with a BSI sensor that has HDR capabilities. It also sports a dedicated camera key on the side that allows you to quickly switch on the camera; you can click once for the camera to be activated and once more to take the shot.

UniHome in the Emotion UI combines home panels with the main menu, while Huawei’s Me Widget better utilises screen real-estate by combining all the information and functions you need in a single, customisable widget. Emotion UI is pre-installed with a smartphone housekeeper function that supports real-time data traffic tracking, automatic blacklisting and blocking, periodical system cleaning, and spontaneous exiting of idle programs and cache cleanup, in addition to an antivirus, energy saving, privacy protection and software management.

The Ascend P2 will be available globally around the second quarter of 2013.